


Void

by Espereth



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Community: asscreedkinkmeme, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:24:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espereth/pseuds/Espereth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik finds himself in a strange black void with a man who looks like Altaïr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Void

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted on the kinkmeme: http://asscreedkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1611.html?thread=8037451#cmt8037451

For a long time Malik saw only black. Obviously he had been captured, and probably drugged, as he remembered nothing of where he was.

Blackness, the thickest, most impenetrable dark he had ever experienced. How had they done it? He felt no blindfold. Had he been blinded? He touched his eyes, feeling a reassuring salt-sting, and warm wet on his fingertips.

Eventually he began to see not nothingness, but infinity - its planes inscribed, given depth by formless lines, stretching forever through the black. The floor beneath him felt solid, but looking down was like falling into a chasm. He fought for calm, dropping by instinct into a crouch on the invisible plane.

Long minutes passed before another shape began to emerge from the infinite black, wavering into being several feet away - and with relief Malik identified it as Altaïr, although very strangely dressed. Much as he disliked the man, he was at least a familiar face in this unfamiliar world.

Altaïr's trousers were stiff blue cotton, his hooded shirt a thick soft fabric unlike any Malik had seen before. But as the figure formed more clearly before him, Malik tensed once more. Whoever this was, it was not Altaïr, but another man - who could have been wearing his Brother's skin.

Malik shot silently to his feet and readied himself to fight.

The man stared back at him, nonplussed. He hadn't moved, except to mirror Malik's readied stance. Malik felt sure he was the same age as Altaïr, but somehow this man seemed younger. There was none of Altaïr's purpose, his unrelenting drive. Or his arrogance. His nose had the same proud arch. This man could be Altaïr's double - but he was not. Skin the same pale olive, but softer. Everything about him was softer. 

His eyes, although an identical shade of dark amber, lacking Altaïr's sharp arrogance seemed almost dreamy by comparison. The high graceful cheekbones and clean jawline, though undeniably beautiful by any standards, lacked the bold acquiline character of Altaïr's. 

His body looked as though it had once been lean and powerful, but now was thin, the muscles slackened, like those of a man bedridden for several months with illness. But he did not look ill. He slouched a little - most people would not have noticed, but Malik had been raised under Masyaf's discipline, and to him this man's underconfidence, his self-doubt, might as well have been inscribed across his forehead.

However, there was no mistaking the fact that he was an Assassin. As Malik circled him, wary but not threatening, the man shifted his stance smoothly, instinctively, so that they faced each other. His feet were light and sure, his body slipping casually into an almost imperceptible defensive position.

He was no civilian.

And from the way he flexed his left hand unconsciously, he possessed a hidden blade. Again, anyone except a trained Assassin would not have known. He kept his blade hand ever so slightly in front of his body - not enough to threaten or even, to the uninitiated, to reveal the presence of his weapon - but just enough to be ready.

Something else was strange. Malik saw confusion in the eyes of the man who faced him, and more than a little fear. But he also saw recognition.

He knows who I am, Malik thought, his frown deepening. Some Templar sorcery brought me here. 

This place - what else could it be? Malik should kill this man now, before he himself was killed. But could Malik beat him, if this standoff came to combat?

Malik was stronger, fitter, had trained more recently. Before Solomon's Temple, before the loss of his left arm, Malik would not even have needed to pose that question to himself. He would have trusted his own ability. But these days, he had constantly to remind himself of the strange lightness on his left side, the imbalance, the fact that he would never again be what he was.

Malik realised he was still circling Altaïr's double in the void, but that the man had made no move to attack him, simply returning Malik's analysing stare with a puzzled frown. He might have stolen Altaïr's skin, but nothing else was alike. His soft eyes, bemused expression - even the scar across his lips was softer, finer, better healed - and absolutely no aggression.

As Malik calmed himself he realised that whatever this man was, he was not a threat. He almost felt sorry for circling him like some kind of predator.

Malik shook his wrist, twisted it within the modified bracer he had designed, and the blade and its apparatus fell to the ground with a jarring clatter - the first noise either of them had made.

The man in the void jumped, startled. Then Malik held up his hand to show that it was now empty.

"Take off your weapon, Brother," he said, kicking his own to the neutral ground between them.

"Uh, okay."

Malik did not know what the word meant but evidently it was agreement, as he did as Malik had instructed.

"I am Malik al-Sayf. Dai of Jerusalem."

"I know. I'm Desmond." He spoke with a strange slurred accent, the words all running together. 

Palm still raised, Malik stepped closer. "What is this place?"

"It's... the Animus. It'd take a while to explain. This is an illusion made by a machine. It isn't real."

"A dream?"

"I guess. Kinda."

"Why are we here?" Malik did not like to ask such questions. Whatever system was to be used to judge their ranks, Desmond surely was below him. His whole demeanour was proof enough of that. He might be an Assassin, but he was no leader.

Desmond shrugged. 

Frowning in confusion Malik reached to touch him. It was so strange, seeing Altaïr's face worn by someone so different from him.

Keeping perfectly still, Desmond let Malik run light quick fingers over a cheekbone and through his close-cut hair. Malik smoothed his thumb over one dark eyebrow, then traced the fine pale scar over the corner of Desmond's mouth.

Desmond's eyes widened, and he stopped breathing, swallowing hard. Then his lips parted a fraction, and pressed together again ever so slightly around the tip of Malik's finger.

Malik felt an unbidden stab of pain - touching this face, doing what Altaïr would never in a hundred years permit him to do. But at the same time, he wondered with a twist of rage if he would ever again be able to look at Altaïr without hating him.

Desmond drew back at the sudden flash of mixed longing and anger, and Malik touched his arm in silent apology. He was not Altaïr, and none of this was his fault.

"The Templars brought us both here," Desmond said eventually. "I'm a prisoner."

"A prisoner?" Malik raised his eyebrows in another implicit question - Why have you not fought your way to freedom, or died trying, as Altaïr would have done?

Desmond had asked himself the same question, so many times. "I'm... working on it," he said finally. 

"What do they want?"

"Information, I guess." Desmond shrugged. 

Malik nodded understanding. "In that case, perhaps it is best we do not talk."

***

Some time later, Desmond was sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching an increasingly agitated Malik pacing uselessly through the void. 

"If you go too far away," Desmond warned him, "you won't be able to find your way back here. It doesn't matter how good a sense of direction you've got, it's useless in here. Trust me, I know from experience."

"They have left you in here before?"

"Yeah, sometimes when there's a malfunction in the Animus. Or if I've pissed off Vidic, and Lucy isn't around."

Malik turned to stare at him. "How can you stand it?"

"Stand what? What am I supposed to do? You can't fight these people. They've learned a lot since your time."

"And have you learned nothing? There is always a way to fight," Malik said, kicking at the ground - the only solid surface he'd found - and continuing to pace. 

"There's no way out of here, Malik," said Desmond with resignation. "You might as well just wait. They'll leave me here until they get whatever it is they want, or they think up something else they want instead."

"You should give them nothing. Refuse to co-operate. Force them to fight you. This... this passivity does nothing!"

"If I did that... look, let's just say it wouldn't work, okay?"

Malik muttered something, agitated, and paced again, so far afield that Desmond grew anxious.

"Malik... If I knew how to get to Masyaf from here, I'd tell you," he called eventually.

Malik stalked back over to glare at him, but there was no hint of mockery in Desmond's eyes - only tiredness and futility, and some element of sympathy. Had the Templars broken this young Assassin? Who had trained him? Why didn't he want to fight? Someone had to take him in hand, shake him out of this stupor before he lost himself completely.

Malik strode back to where their blades sat together, touching, the only features apart from their own bodies in this formless void.

Malik picked up the blades, threw Desmond's into his lap. "Get on your feet, and put that on. Stand up, now - or I will make you stand up. Would you rather train with me, or sit around in despair? What is this! If I ever meet your master, by God, he will have a piece of my mind."

"Okay, okay," Desmond said, standing up. "You're right, okay? I'm sorry for complaining."

"That's better," Malik said, and his mouth curved into a wolfish grin. Struggling to imagine Altaïr ever saying anything like that, he had to laugh.

"Have you ever fought one-handed, Desmond? No? Well, now you are going to learn..."


End file.
